Our research involves the study of the contribution of pragmatic or world knowledge to the comprehension of language by brain damaged patients. Through studies of the linguistic devices of anaphora, ellipsis, indirect speech acts, and implicature, we examine the relation between brain injury and pragmatic processing. We hope to isolate component processes of pragmatic processing and relate these components to focal brain damage. We feel that these studies will further elucidate the nature of communication disorders due to brain disease and will further elucidate the mechanisms through which world knowledge is integrated with linguistic information in language comprehension.